Editorial: The ashes of a dissident and of a minister

Félix Bonne Carcassés and Carlos Fernández Gondín died at the end of last week, just a few hours apart, in Havana. The former was a professor at the University of Havana for 20 years, ousted for his political views and imprisoned for "sedition and actions against the security of the Cuban state." The latter, a division general, had been Interior Minister since 2015. Both were cremated.

The funerary honors for Fernández Gondín featured all the due pomp and circumstance: an urn exhibited at the Pantheon of Veterans at Columbus Cemetery, prior to their burial in the Mausoleum of the Second Front. The ashes of Bonne Carcasses, in contrast, were to be scattered at sea, in a quiet corner of the Malecón. But such a simple ceremony was prohibited by authorities at the ministry which Fernandez Gondín headed until his death, which arrested friends and colleagues who came to pay their final tribute to Bonne Carcassés.

There is widespread fear among the Cuban regime's elite, which recommends the cremation of every deceased leader's body. This fear spurs the regime to pursue and repress a simple ceremony involving the ashes of a dissident. It is fear of the future. Fear of the desecration of corpses, and fear of ending up as a corpse.

"The increase in repression in Cuba began, not a few days ago, and not motivated by statements by Trump or his team, but during the Obama Administration." And it was Minister Fernández Gondín who was behind it. Tracing the origin of repression in Cuba to recent external threats is a subterfuge. The origin of repression is firmly within the regime: the fear of the future its leaders feel, their fear of being cadavers, and receiving a dreaded punishment –even after their deaths.